Petrol Ted on Safety

I went to the cinema the other day. Nothing unusual in that - except that they now serve sausage rolls - but I did notice one change. Gone were the entertaining mini-dramas from Pearl and Dean. I missed the exciting music, the flickery, grainy advert for the Moghul Tandoori and for hot dogs that look like legless Dachshunds.

In their place were public information films. Not the amusing nonsense telling us to hide under a table if a nuclear winter is forcast, but short adverts about road safety.

For once I've got something positive to say. The ad featuring a biker slamming into a car is both shocking and I'm very glad to say sensiblely portrayed. It's taken an intelligent approach in pointing out that numpties (and for that matter, the rest of us sometimes) don't always see bikers. Telling the bikers to drive defensively and with their numpty-sensors on high alert seems like a refreshingly intelligent approach to the problem.

Traffic Kills

My enthusiasm for a new age of thought provoking adverts was dashed shortly after though. Not by the advert for Lynx armpit acid, but for another 'information' film about a kid getting run over. They reveal some staggering statistic like 99% of all children are killed by traffic.

That in itself is a concern, but what did the advert tell me? It told me that the kid got mown down by a monstrous 4x4 when he ran out into the road. Was it trying to tell kids that they should use the Green Cross Code? I don't think so - there was no sign of the Green Cross Code man. I suspect he'd just be accused of being a Paedophile in 21st century Britain. Does it give tips to the driver on improving their powers of observation or hazard awareness? No it doesn't. It just tells me that 4x4's make a mess of lots of kids.

Which brings me onto my other gripe of the moment. Car designers are soon to be hampered by new rules to make cars more 'pedestrian friendly'. Not a bad idea if possible, but it does mean that cars of the future will have high bonnets and puny engines in case anyone bangs their head on the rocker covers. It has to be said that some of the legislation has already done some good such as removing sharp extremeties such as headlamp wash/wipe mechanisms which were proving difficult to extract from thighs. That's no reason for all cars of the future to look like HYUNDAAAAIs though.

Any Point?

However, the next stage of safety measures for saloons are likely to be a bit of a waste of time and will serve merely to give us ugly cars. Whilst all the progress in the world can be made to mollycoddle pedestrians when slamming into them in a Mondeo, the fact remains that 4x4xflattened sales are increasing hand over fist.

The chances of getting mown down by an SUV the size of a Sherman tank are higher than ever. The chances of anyone surviving such an impact are hugely reduced when compared to our humble cars. So before we start fitting blankets and pillows to the bonnets of saloons shouldn't something be done about the plethora of mobile battering rams on our streets?

Gotta agree on the whole 4x4 thing, they are an absolute menace.....in the country they are essential, but in a big city?!? WTF?!? they are not enviromentaly friendly, and in an accident with a car, the car driver is pretty much guaranteed to end up dead. 4x4s should be limited to the land-rover defender, ie something purposeful, not a prestige motor vehicle, which they seem to be becoming!

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